Consumer Health Data Plays: Vision? Yes. Value? Maybe…

In an otherwise slow summer, health IT got caught up in a whirl of excitement last month when Apple, Samsung, Google, and a few smaller players announced their own forays into the digital consumer health space. Each of the three tech titans presented its own unique offering for consumers to store, share, and otherwise manage health-related data about themselves, using a combination of built and partnered hardware and software.

With a macro shift in care delivery away from episodic visits towards data-driven population health management, the healthcare industry is increasingly interested in a go-to solution that will get patients more directly involved in managing their own health. While the dust has not fully settled, it has become clearer in the wake of initial fervor that these new platforms have a substantial set of challenges ahead of them. In this month’s Domain Monitor, Chilmark Research outlines these challenges and extrapolates their implications for the rest of the industry.